In The Beginning Was The Plot.....And The Plot Thickened! Adventures on a Lancashire Allotment & Miscellaneous Musings.

08 November 2006

Winter Work

Well, that's enough creativity for one year! Now back to gardening. The autumn sown broad beans think it's spring and i hope we get a bit of cold soon or they'll get too leggy and winter will pounce on them one day and give them a nasty surprise. We harvested the very last crop of tomatoes on Monday....in the first week of November! I ask you, what is the world coming too?

We've sent off our seed guardian seeds down to the HSL and some pictures of our heritage crops for use in their catalogue. There was mangold, achocha, asparagus kale, blue queen dwarf beans, caseknife, grass pea cicerchia. We got a nice e mail back to say they were very happy with both the seeds and the photographs. Now looking forward to receiving the HSL catalogue after Christmas to plan next years gardening adventures.

If you missed out on GG's very good recipe for using the mangolds then here it is again. I hope a few readers can be persuaded to give mangolds a try out...they are yummy.

Parboil mangold, small turnip, parsnip, carrot; fry small onion with crushed garlic and place with bare covering of vegetable stock & majoram in roasting dish, (at this point the colours are exquisite - marbled butter-cup yellow in the mangold, orange of carrot, white of turnip,cream of parsnip and dark red of onion), top with mixture of wholemeal breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese and parsley and dot with butter. Bake for 40 minutes. Delicious.

Work goes on clearing and manuring and this year I'd like to collect masses of leafmould to cover the bare plots as we haven't got round to sowing any green manures.

Should do a bit of shed maintenance too really. Maybe I could just ring Alizon for that :-)....she owes us.

5 comments:

I am interested in trying mangolds. I've been put off by catalogues which suggest that they are best used as livestock feed. Is the taste similar to beetroot? You can see the results of my beetroot blind taste test on my fledgling site - http://mustardplaster.blogspot.com/2006/10/blind-taste-test.html

I am about to grow some achocha this year and have a few questions I need answered on it and noticed that you are a seed guardian for it! As it is so prolific I plan to grow just one plant over an arch a foot wide and 78" tall. I understand you can eat them raw when young and cook the older ones and have a recipe for an indian vegetable dish using them. Would love further ideas. Also is it easy to save the seed? Should I grow another plant for that or can I just take some fruits from the same plant for seeds?

Thanks in advanceLois

p.s. Could you email me via my web site or post on the Allotment UK forum (I am Tangent) as I will not know if you have replied here.